


Stamets knows all the Gossip

by DestinChild



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Introspection, Minor Hugh Culber/Paul Stamets, Minor Michael Burnham/Ash Tyler | Voq, Minor Michael Burnham/Gabriel Lorca, Spoilers for seasons 1&2, gossip on starships, referenced background character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:01:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23791237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestinChild/pseuds/DestinChild
Summary: Gossip spreads like wildfire on starships and believe it or not the best person to go to for the scuttlebutt is Paul Stamets.  His observations on the twisted relationship between Michael, Lorca, and Ash.
Kudos: 16





	Stamets knows all the Gossip

**Author's Note:**

> My first Discovery fic, but not my first Star Trek fic. Please let me know what you think. Reviews and kudos are love.

Disclaimer: Hello Dearies! I do not own Star Trek Discovery. If I did MirrorVerse Captain Lorca would have stayed on the show into season two because I would have loved to have seen him and Captain Pike play off each other.

When you are on a star ship there are no secrets. No matter how hard you try to be discrete or private sooner or later someone finds out your secret and before you know it the entire ship is privy to your private business. No one would guess, but if you wanted the scuttlebutt the best person to go to was Paul Stamets. Most people thought that Tilly had all the details of the goings on, but truly it was Stamets and by extension his partner Hugh Culber. Between Stamets, having a constant flow of people through engineering and him needing access to the rest of the ship to make sure his spore drive was running efficiently, he was able to observe most of the crew unnoticed. Same with Dr. Culber. Everyone came and went at one point or another through sickbay and it seemed that no one really payed attention to the doctors that were constantly milling about, treating patients and doing their own research. So both Stamets and Culber learned all about their shipmates and would reconvene each night to discuss any juicy news.  
The juiciest news that Stamets had in a while was when he heard Captain Lorca talking about the mutineer, Michael Burnham. Apparently, her prison transport vessel had gone through spores and had needed to be rescued. Stamets listened to Lorca as he told the chief of security that four prisoners would be housed on the Discovery, one Michael Burnham would be separate from the others. Culber was the one that overheard the reason they were on board was that they needed their pilot to recover. While secretly both men where intrigued by the idea of the mutineer being on the ship, it soon became inconsequential because neither of them would get to see the infamous Michael.  
That was of course before Michael walked herself into Stamets’ engineering. She walked around, back straight and hands linked, looking for all the world like she belonged there. Like she wasn’t intruding into their little world. He had reproached her and she had merely stared at him and reported to work when he told her. Culber was intrigued and scared for his partner when Stamets recalled the tale. What if Burnham had tried to attack him? Stamets had given his partner a look.  
Soon, Lorca had invited Michael to stay on the ship as a science specialist and Michael made herself at home, becoming part of the inner workings of the Discovery. At first everyone stared at her. Nobody couldn’t watch as the one and only mutineer in Star Fleet history walked the decks, ate in the mess hall, and worked on the bridge. Eventually though, the novelty wore off. Burnham could go anywhere she wished without someone so much as giving her the side eye, except the Captain, noticed Stamets one day. He was up on the bridge for another meeting having to do with the spore drive (and trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B without a map) when Stamets noticed that Captain Lorca’s eyes followed Burnham. He didn’t even know why she was in the meeting, but there she was and there was Captain Lorca subtly tracking her every move. When Stamets told Hugh later he brushed it off as the Captain just being a little weary of having a mutineer on board. Paul didn’t think that was the case, but he let it slide.  
When Ash Tyler joined the crew of the Discovery it was no secret to anyone that he was instantly drawn to Michael. And not because she was a mutineer and he was the new head of security. He gravitated toward her like she was the sun and he was some lonely moon. While Stamets and Culber were not the only ones to notice this, in fact only Michael seemed to be oblivious to Tyler’s attention, they were the only ones to notice a change in the Captain. He almost became hyper aware every time Tyler and Burnham were any where near each other and he managed to maneuver himself between them. When Michael asked to go against regulations (typical) and save her adoptive father, Lorca was more then happy to grant her leave to do so and to take whomever she wished with her. But then she needed a pilot and someone to protect her and Lorca was begrudgingly made to appoint Tyler as their escort. Of course, through Tilly, Stamets discovered that Lorca had not so subtly threatened Tyler that if he didn’t bring Michael back then he shouldn’t return himself. Finally, proof that there was at least a one sided thing between Burnham and Lorca that Hugh couldn’t say was circumstantial.  
The game changer of information came when Harry Mudd trapped the entire ship in a thirty minute time loop. The only one who retained all their memories each time the time loop reset was Stamets and man he couldn’t wait for all this to be over. One, because he was seriously sleep deprived and exhausted from trying to save the day each time, and two because he couldn’t wait to tell Hugh what he had witnessed. Unsurprisingly, Tyler and Burnham had kissed during one of their loops. While some might had thought that was a huge deal it had nothing on what the Captain had done.  
When Stamets had realized they were stuck in a time loop he had started to make his way to the bridge each time they reset. He found that not only did he get more information being up there, but he also needed to talk to Burnham and Tyler and they kept getting called to the bridge. On one of these trips Harry Mudd had shown up with a phaser. While this was no shocker compared to the other times he had done the same, this time he started pointing his phaser at the bridge crew. One by one he shot the crew and Lorca had let it happen. After all, the lives of the many were worth more then the lives of the few. But then Mudd’s phaser arced through the air and pointed at one Michael Burnham. In one fluid motion Lorca was out of his chair and between the phaser and Michael. “No,” had said Lorca before Mudd could fire. “Interesting,” remarked Mudd before pulling the trigger and restarting the loop.  
That was just the beginning. Between that time loop and the last, Stamets had watched Lorca die twenty-three times while protecting Michael. Each time he had jumped in front of the phaser, disintegration ball, and the other various weapons Mudd had produced, and died in various degrees of pain all to save Michael. However, there was one time that Stamets couldn’t wait to tell Hugh about. Mudd had shown up , predictably for Stamets by this point, on the bridge and had activated the self destruction sequence. Mudd had turned to Lorca and told him that he would stop the self destruct if Lorca would tell him how their propulsion drive worked. Lorca of course refused and so Mudd had demanded the computer shorten the self destruct to ten seconds. Everyone looked at each other in horror. All except Lorca. He looked at Mudd, nodding his head and accepting his fate, before he turned and walked over to Michael who was standing gobsmacked at her station. Lorca used one hand to turn Burnham to face him and then cupped her cheek with his other. Before she could ever question him, he kissed her in front of the whole bridge crew. Everything was so still that the proverbial pin drop would have deafened them. “I lov,” was all Lorca got out before the ship blew up.  
That time loop kept replaying itself in Stamets’ head. Even as he was blown to pieces over forty times. He couldn’t get the whole thing out of his head. The look on Lorca’s face and the ease with which he turned and kissed Michael, as if he had done this a million times. But the look on Burnham’s face and her reaction, the complete surprise, told Stamets that this had never happened before, or at least not for her. And didn’t that open a whole bunch of questions. Hugh was just as surprised and puzzled when Paul told him about all the time loops.  
Of course, then the whole ship got taken into the Mirror verse and suddenly Lorca had all the answers. Who each person was in this universe and what they had done. He had said that he got the information from the data core from the wrecked klingon ship, but Stamets had been suspicious when he woke up from his jump induced delirium. Of course, by then the damage had been done and everyone had discovered that Lorca wasn’t who he said he was. And Hugh was gone forever. Thats what Paul couldn’t forgive. The lying about the Mirror verse, he could forgive. He might have been scared if he was in Lorca’s position. The espionage and the lying to fit into the Mirror verse, he could forgive that too. But inherently he knew that Lorca and even Burnham, to some degree, had seen the change in Tyler and had done nothing about it till it was too late. Voq had appeared and taken away the one person that Staments couldn’t live without. And that was just too much for Staments to keep carrying on.

Naturally, aboard the star ship Discovery, nothing is as it seems to be and even death is not final. Paul Staments had managed to travel into the mycelium network, to save Tilly, and there he had found the love of his life, he had found his Hugh. Slightly damaged and terrified, but it was Hugh and he was able to bring him back onto the Discovery. Of course, Hugh wasn’t quite the same. He didn’t understand everything that Paul did for him or the love that Paul had for him. The music, the dinners, the quiet time in their cabin, it was all foreign to Hugh. Which had hurt Paul, but he had tried to understand. Hugh had gone through a lot and he couldn’t be expected to jump back into his life as if nothing had changed.  
What really had hurt Paul was the loss of his confidant. There was so much going on, on the ship and Paul had tried to talk to Hugh about it, but Hugh was having none of it. Hugh didn’t care that Michael Burnham had been reinstated to her full rank or that Paul had a feeling that a small part of that was due to Pike’s fascination with her. He had yet to riddle out if Pike had a thing for Burnham (what was with Burnham and Captains of the Discovery) or if his interest stemmed from the fact that Burnham was his science officer, Mr. Spock’s, adopted sister. This is when Paul would turn to Hugh for help trying to decipher the reason, Hugh was so much better with human interaction then Paul, but Hugh didn’t care. There was so much more for Hugh to refamiliarize himself with, then the interpersonal relationships of the crew. So, Hugh had brushed off Paul’s queries and had gone about his day as if Paul, and his gossip, hadn’t existed. That was of course, until Ash Tyler returned to the ship.  
Tyler swore that while Voq was technically a part of him, it wasn’t his dominant personality. Of course that meant nothing to Michael Burnham, who was still uneasy around him, which who could blame her after he tried to kill her. But that wan’t the worrying part for Stamets. Hugh had to see Tyler everyday. Not by any fault of his own, the Captain clearly hadn’t familiarized himself with all that had gone done on the Discovery. So, he had assigned Tyler to quarters on the same deck as Culber and Stamets and that did not sit well with Stamets. He was going to request that Captain Pike move Tyler’s quarters. Of course he had a feeling that the Captain did not want to put Tyler’s quarters on the same deck as one Michael Burnham’s. So, that meant that Tyler would find his quarters closer to the Captain’s, which was probably not preferable for either man, but what could they do. Stamets didn’t want Tyler near Culber, Pike didn’t want Tyler anywhere near Burnham, who despite being a reinstated commander, had retained her room with Ensign Tilly, so that meant that Tyler would have to be roomed by the higher ranking Star Fleet officers. AKA the Captain and Commander Saru. Paul scoffed and wished Tyler good luck trying to see Michael with those two men in close proximity. Between Saru’s kinship with Burnham and Pike’s weird fascination, Tyler would be lucky if he could even eat lunch with her in a crowded mess hall without people trying to separate them.  
Of course that still didn’t matter to Paul. His partner wasn’t quite right and Captain Pike was letting Michael Burnham go off and disregard regulations (shocker), to save her adopted brother. He so wanted to talk to Hugh and get his opinions on whether Pike had allowed Michael to do this because it was Spock, Pike’s science officer and friend, or if there was more to the relationship between Pike and Burnham. But Hugh had moved out and Paul had to find someone else to share his gossip with. He considered several crewman before settling on Ensign Tilly. While she was more prone to jump to romantic conclusions and she seemed to have an unhealthy obsession with Burnham and Tyler’s relationship, he figured she knew a good amount of gossip. Also, she was good with keeping a secret when it came down to it.  
So Paul confided in Tilly. And they concluded that perhaps one Captain Christopher Pike did have a small crush on one Commander Michael Burnham, but that was between them. And perhaps Stamets and Tilly made it a little easier for Pike and Burnham to be in the same room together. And they made it a little harder for Tyler to be in the same space as Burnham. Either way Stamets really wanted to see where this all led. And hopefully, one day Culber would rejoin him in pursuing the gossip on board the USS Discovery. Who knows. With Commander Spock now aboard the ship, Stamets and Tilly couldn’t figure out if his presence would help or hinder either Pike or Tyler. Only time would tell. And the scuttlebutt continued making its way about the ship.


End file.
